Vladimir Putin used his St Petersburg forum on 5 June to reject Volodymyr Zelenskyy's 4 June open letter proposing a face-to-face meeting, saying he saw "no point" and that the letter contained "elements of rudeness"1. He repeated the precondition that has frozen every round since May: a treaty pre-agreed on Russia's terms, including all of Donetsk, before any summit.
Western Europe answered by codifying its own position. On 7 June, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, the E3 leaders, met Zelenskyy and backed a five-point framework2. Its second point is the shift that matters: the line of contact, where the two armies now face each other, not Ukraine's 1991 borders, should be the starting point for talks.
Taking that line as the baseline would lock in the roughly one fifth of Ukraine Russia now occupies, rather than demanding a withdrawal to the pre-2022 border. The other four points (a multinational force, frozen Russian assets held until reparations, a binding ceasefire) tighten the screws even as the territorial clause hands Moscow a notional win. With Washington's mediation closed since May, the NATO Ankara Summit on 7-8 July is now the next test of whether the framework holds.
